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Old Age Wonders

You smile at the male supermarket clerk and make some pleasant comment then wonder, “Does he think the old broad is coming on to him?”

You wonder if people think you inappropriate with your smile, jeans, high heel boots, jewelry, being a Macklemore fan, anything thought not-old. If they knew you know about BDSM would they think it truly disgusting and nasty, even if you told them you have no liking for it?

You don’t like moving the way you do, problems due to balance difficulties and creeping arthritis. Young people can move the same way due to injury but you just look like another old person.

You don’t want to look in the mirror, with or without makeup. How could anyone want to sit across a table from that and try to eat?

Your foot slips on debris at the side of the road and you fall down. You’ve fallen down a lot over the years and thought nothing much about it. Now you wonder if it will happen more frequently. Will you break something?

You used to love highway driving. Now you avoid it as much as possible and hate yourself for doing so. Roaring down the Parkway at 80, 85 was a high. Now it’s just a pain in the posterior—which fortunately is still working okay.

You wish you’d done some things you didn’t, but wonder if they would work now. You wish you’d appreciated your body more when it was in better working condition.

You should be grateful for your current condition—you take no meds—but there are questions about how life will be as you get older and older.

You, maybe, should take Carolyn Heilbrun’s approach and check yourself out before old age gets completely ridiculous, and truly annoying.

If you, the reader, are young, appreciate it, revel in it. When you get old you too might get to the point of thinking of yourself in the second rather than the first person. It takes the edge off aging a little bit.